Why am I passionate about this?

Thanks to my mother, I grew up immersed in English literature. I was educated in Delhi and co-founded the first nationwide feminist magazine, but same-sex love was never mentioned either in the classroom or in the women’s movement. I educated myself in Indian literature and discovered that same-sex sexuality had been practiced and written about until the British criminalized it. I wrote several books about same-sex unions in Indian literature and history and translated poetry and fiction from Hindi and Urdu to English. My first novel, Memory of Light, is a love story between two courtesans, based in pre-colonial India, where poets freely wrote about same-sex, as well as cross-sex love. 


I wrote

A Slight Angle

By Ruth Vanita,

Book cover of A Slight Angle

What is my book about?

A group of young people, some friends, some relatives, in 1920s urban India, negotiate their relationships, professions, and political commitments.…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Persian Boy

Ruth Vanita Why did I love this book?

This is one of the first books I found when I was scrounging around for gay literature in Indian bookshops in the early 1980s. I re-read it every few years; as one of Oscar Wilde’s characters remarks, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

Renault brings the ancient Greek world to life as no other novelist has. She delineates the wonderfully erotic and moving relationship between Alexander the Great and his Persian lover, Bagoas, who narrates the story.

By Mary Renault,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Persian Boy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas is sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but finds freedom with Alexander the Great after the Macedon army conquers his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander's mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone.


Book cover of The Conversations of Cow

Ruth Vanita Why did I love this book?

I love this book for its humour, magical qualities, deceptively simple language, and the way it weaves together Hindu and Western ideas of transformation.

I have taught it in many different types of classes and my students also loved its unique portrait of the artist as a young Indian woman, a lesbian living in the West. It was a great way to introduce them to India. I am an admirer of Suniti Namjoshi, and this is my favourite among her works.

By Suniti Namjoshi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Conversations of Cow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


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Book cover of The Woodland Stranger: A Fairy Tale with Benefits

The Woodland Stranger By Jane Buehler,

Burne’s been hiding out in the forest since deserting the King’s Guard. Each time he tries to return to the village, he begins to panic. And then one day, he encounters a handsome stranger picking flowers and hides behind a tree instead of talking.

He wants to be braver—and he’s…

Book cover of A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Ruth Vanita Why did I love this book?

This intricately plotted semi-comic, semi-tragic novel, riffing off Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, keeps the reader guessing to the end.

Simon and Axel are the best gay male couple in fiction, for my money, quirky; adorable; absolutely believable characters whose relationship the villain tries to destroy as he does several other relationships.

I love the story of how they first met, their erotic banter, their clothes, their food and wine, and the way they move towards being more open about their relationship.

By Iris Murdoch,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Fairly Honourable Defeat as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea

In a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties. As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading…


Book cover of Mrs. Dalloway

Ruth Vanita Why did I love this book?

I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Woolf; it was the first dissertation on same-sex love from the English Department at Delhi University.

A reasonably happily married woman of 52, Clarissa Dalloway recalls the most intense moment of her life, when she was young and kissed her friend Sally, and had the feeling, “Othello’s feeling” that “if ‘twere now to die/ ‘Twere now to be most happy.”

Looking back, Clarissa realizes that she has only ever felt passionately for women, and this leads to Woolf’s lyrical evocation of female orgasm, which I think is the most powerful description of this experience in the English language.

By Virginia Woolf,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Mrs. Dalloway as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The working title of Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours. The novel began as two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". It describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure.


In October 2005, Mrs. Dalloway was included on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.


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Book cover of A Diary in the Age of Water

A Diary in the Age of Water By Nina Munteanu,

This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto…

Book cover of Maurice

Ruth Vanita Why did I love this book?

Forster captures the loneliness and enforced celibacy many experienced when homosexuality was criminalized, and which I also experienced.

Forster had his first sexual experience at 37. His hero Maurice, like characters in many novels of the early twentieth century, tries therapy to change himself, and remains in a celibate relationship until his partner marries a woman. Maurice was published after Forster’s death, though it was written six decades earlier.

It inspired younger writers like Isherwood and was made into a great film with the young Hugh Grant as Maurice’s partner Clive. Forster’s statement that he would not have bothered to write unless he could give his hero a happy ending, also inspired my fiction-writing.

By E.M. Forster,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Maurice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As Maurice Hall makes his way through a traditional English education, he projects an outer confidence that masks troubling questions about his own identity. Frustrated and unfulfilled, a product of the bourgeoisie he will grow to despise, he has difficulty acknowledging his nascent attraction to men.

At Cambridge he meets Clive, who opens his eyes to a less conventional view of the nature of love. Yet when Maurice is confronted by the societal pressures of life beyond university, self-doubt and heartbreak threaten his quest for happiness.


Explore my book 😀

A Slight Angle

By Ruth Vanita,

Book cover of A Slight Angle

What is my book about?

A group of young people, some friends, some relatives, in 1920s urban India, negotiate their relationships, professions, and political commitments. Among them are a Hindu man, madly in love with his male teacher at Delhi University, who helps his sister marry her Christian musician boyfriend, despite family disapproval; a Gandhian woman who starts a school for poor children and falls in love with a Jewish film actress in Bombay; the writer Ugra (historical figure) who wrote the first modern stories about homosexuality; and Mahadevi (historical figure), who went on to become the greatest twentieth-century Hindi woman poet. How do they change over time and which couples end up together?

Book cover of The Persian Boy
Book cover of The Conversations of Cow
Book cover of A Fairly Honourable Defeat

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